Got Milk?

I was about to write my blog post for this week and my roommate Tom just dropped his cell phone in his bowl of cereal. I wonder if the warranty covers that one? I would go with no.

Also, I have been so busy running around for work that I haven't had a chance to really apply my full creative strengths towards the blog. And now I find out that I will be in Maine all week for work. But hey, I will be sitting in my hotel room all night by myself so there will be plenty of time to get my creative juices flowing. Of course it will probably end up being like Misery and my car will slide off some road and some woman who secretly reads my blog will keep me hostage in her living room all winter.

Anyway, a few weeks ago you may remember that I wrote a post about whether or not blind people cleanup the poop their guide dogs make. Well I have the answer for you. My dad's friend Bob has a blind wife named Kim to whom he posed the question and he passed it along to his wife who happily answered. So here we go:

Yes. Blind people do try to pick up after their dogs. "It" will be found right behind the dog's butt. They usually know when he is dumping, because most dogs do a doodle dance prior to taking a dump. This is where they circle around a few times. Also, they know when he is peeing, because you can hear that. If not peeing, must be a dump.

I would think a problem might arise when the dog is a "walker". Anyone familiar with dogs, knows that some dogs tend to move, or walk, while they are dumping. There may also be an issue if the dog pees and dump at the same time. Hearing the pee, they may be unaware that the dog dumped.

Kim got Oliver [guide dog] from -

http://www.freedomguidedogs.org/

This is a smaller organization which does training at the persons home rather then at some institution. This makes more sense since they are being trained where the dog will be used. I give them money every year. They are a small org, with very low overhead.

So there you go. I kind of feel mad that someone was really able to answer one of my deep thoughts.

My Favorite Day

A little history lesson for you with tomorrow being my half-birthday and all. That's right, tomorrow morning at 6:30 I will officially be 26.5 years old. You can send your e-cards to jordon@comcast.net. Did you know that a half-birthday is one of many unbirthdays, to use Lewis Carroll's term from Through the Looking Glass for any day that is not a person's real birthday?

Quick funny story. When I was in 8th grade my friend Mike would bring in doughnuts whenever he could convince his teachers to let him. Pretty much every class would end with, "Can we have a party tomorrow?" Now that I look back on school, I realize that the teachers just didn't have enough material to teach everyday so they would just let the kids have parties or watch movies that were totally disparate from what we were supposed to be learning.

So I was sitting in English class one day and Mike came by to drop off his baseball uniform. Of course, he had doughnuts with him and tossed one to me across the entire room. The teacher asked him why he had doughnuts and he said it was his half-birthday. Mr. Lower did not like this wise ass answer one bit. But it gets better. One week later Mike stopped by with more doughnuts. Mr. Lower asked him, "Mike, what are you doing here again?" "It's the one week anniversary of my half-birthday."

So you see folks, no matter what the day, there's always reason to celebrate. I'll be expecting another e-card 7 days from now.

Let's Go State

What an insane weekend! I made trip to Happy Valley for TailGreat '06. It was very exciting. I was able to leave work early on Friday, which is a good thing because my brain was ready to melt after a full week of real, actual work. I made it to my brother's apartment around 8:30 in the evening. After a quick hello to drop my stuff off, Leric and I went to one of my favorite eateries from my college days: D.P. Dough. They sell calzones for those of you not familiar. This was my first reality check that I have, in fact, become the "creepy old" alumnus trying to hold on to those days gone by.

I used to order the Happy Valley Zone. It was basically a chicken parmesan calzone. I used to order two because then you got a free can of Coke with it. Anyway, much to my chagrin, they no longer have the Happy Valley Zone. The guy working behind the counter told me that they changed the name of it four years ago. When did I graduate? Four years ago. A small tear began to roll down my cheek.

So after some X-pong (See previous post); about 8 hours of tailgating; some windy beer pong (Beirut for those of you from New England); multiple shotguned beers; some new golf ball/horseshore game that I can't remember the name of but Leric called it Monkey Balls; and getting to sit in the student section for the Penn State-Michigan game (which they lost 17-10); I met my ex-girlfriend at the Lion's Den for a drink. I had never been to the Lion's Den while I was in school and now I know why.

While at the bar I discovered something interesting. Ok. You are at a bar with one friend and it's pretty crowded but you don't know anyone else. You are standing around talking and then your friend says to you that they are going to the bathroom. This leaves you defenseless. Am I the only one who dreads this moment as you are standing there with nobody to talk to? You look around, check your watch, look at your cell phone so it looks like you are important, take a drink, do some quick people watching, take another drink, and then breath a sigh of relief when your friend comes back. Has anyone else ever experienced this? Or do most normal people immediately go up to a stanger and spark up a new coversation? Am I just a total loser? Actually, don't answer that last one. Please let me know your feelings on this.

Note: This feeling can also be extended to any social situation. Think about a family event with lots of old people and distant cousins who your parents know but you have never seen them before but they know everything about you. Maybe a work-related function where you get stuck standing next to someone you never talk to in the office.

Pure Genius

I don't know what is going on in my life recently. My job is actually keeping me busy for 8 hours a day. What's up with that? I've never had a job like this before...very un-Cheifet-like. I have been so busy this week that I didn't even have a chance to do my weekly blog post. So you should feel honored that I am sitting on my couch typing for you right now. I think this is a first.

Anyway, you may have heard that a new movie is coming out entitled "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." It looks very funny and people have been telling me a lot recently that I look a lot like Borat himself. I mean I do wear a similar bathing suit and the ladies do love me. I don't see the resemblence. Must be the body hair and moustache.

So I was watching Da Ali Show the other night (birthplace of Borat) and he was interviewing some big time Federal attorney. The interview was pretty funny and then got on to the topic of the death penalty. Personally I think the justice system could save a lot of tax payer dollars by just giving the jury foreman a loaded gun. "We find the defendant guilty. BANG!" Done. Cost of bullet: 35 cents. But I digress. Ali G posed a question that I found extermemly worthy of being posted on Jordon's Deep Thoughts.

Ali G: Do you really get a last meal before being put to death?

Attorney: Yes, you really do.

Ali G: So why not just order the all-you-can-eat buffet, then they can never kill you?

Genius I tell you. Pure genius.

The Road Not Taken, Eh!

Wow!!! My deepest appologies to you, my readers. I have been slacking in the blog post department lately. I don't really have an excuse other than not having any time to really put together a quality post for you. I mean don't get me wrong but I don't spend my time away from work writing blog posts...that is Jordon-time. I'm currently working on a project where I have to put captions on about 10,000 photos of New York City waterfront structures. My brain has officially melted as I felt a little bit of it drip out of my ear the other day. Not to worry though, the Jordon's Deep Thoughts region of my brain is alive and well and ready to again crank out regular posts. So without further adieu, I present the first blog post of the 2007 fiscal year.

A few years ago I got a National Geographic special edition. The writers and photographers of the magazine were surveyed and had to submit their favorite places that they had been sent on assignment. The responses were assembled into a list of the "100 Places To Visit Before You Die." As I read through the glossy pages, I realized that I had been to a lot of them. I mean it was only 20 or so but considering I was only 24 at the time I figured I was way ahead of most people my age.

You see my parents were always the adventurous traveling-type. They personified the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken. (Included here for your reading pleasure)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

So what does this have anything to do with this post? Well you see, like many, I have developed a list of "Things I Want To Do Before I Die." The list isn't long. Most of them involve traveling to some exotic place that my friends have never been. I just want to be able to say, "Yup, I've been there," or "Yup, I've tried that." Most people laugh when I tell them I want to go to every state or swim in all of the world's oceans. But I say to myself, "You can read everything about the World, but until you actually see it with your own two eyes (one if you are a cyclops), you haven't lived." So not to get too philosophical on you but that my friends brings us to today's post.

One item on my list is to travel to the extreme points of the United States. I have been to the northernmost and southernmost points. Next on the list was the easternmost: West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec, ME. First of all, Maine is huge. Go ahead, take a look at it. My cousin and I decided we were going to take a roadtrip this past weekend up to Maine to visit the easternmost point. You can read his account of it because this post is long enough as it is (See link at right). Not only did we visit Maine but we went all the way to Prince Edward Island in Canada.

What in the world is in Prince Edward Island that would make me want to drive all the way their and back in one weekend? The answer is pretty simple: nothing. That's right, the only reason I went was to check something off my list. Yeah I spent 28 of a possible 48 weekend hours in a car but so what. Otherwise I would have been sitting on my ass watching television. Of course the border police couldn't believe that we driving all the way to Canada just to "see as many provinces as possible" but that was the truth.

Nothing too funny came of this trip. We had to pay a $36 toll to cross a bridge. We decided that only 5,000 Americans could name all of the Canadian provinces and their capitals (Now it's 5,002). We ate at an American and Canadian Subway in the same day. "Jordon, that sounds like the biggest waste of time. Why would you waste a weekend driving to Canada and back?" you may ask. And in the words of Sir Edmund Hillary, "Because it was there."